Customers with existing Prime memberships will receive the new pricing for renewals that initiate on or after April 17

Well, that didn’t take long. It was just over a month ago that Amazon was talking about raising the price of its Prime subscriptions. Amazon CFO Tom Szkutak made it clear that prices for the yearly service could increase by as much as $40/year.

Well, it looks as though the gauntlet has been thrown down, and customers will see an increase of $20 a year, bringing the total to $99.

Someone has to pay for those drones...

In a letter to customers, Amazon writes:

We are writing to provide you advance notice that the price of your Prime membership will be increasing. The annual rate will be $99 when your membership renews.

Even as fuel and transportation costs have increased, the price of Prime has remained the same for nine years. Since 2005, the number of items eligible for unlimited free Two-Day Shipping has grown from one million to over 20 million. We also added unlimited access to over 40,000 movies and TV episodes with Prime Instant Video and a selection of over 500,000 books to borrow from the Kindle Owners' Lending Library.

The new pricing will go into effect for new Prime members starting March 19. For current Prime members, the new pricing will go into effect for susbscriptions that renew on or after April 17. Pricing for Student Prime memberships will also be increasing from $39 to $49.